


Valhalla

by AquaMarinara



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: (none of the kids are dying though dw), Cheryl is adopted by Nana Rose, Chief FP, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, F/M, How to Train Your Dragon AU, M/M, Riverdale is an isle in 800s Denmark, Sharing a Bed, Vikings, What else is new, as is a Major Character Death in my writing, is drunk and not very good at solving the dragon-raid issue, it's okay though because badass!Betty's on the case, meanwhile Jughead shoots down a dragon and proceeds to feel terrible about it, oh and he pines for Betty, that's quite new!, there'll be a lot of those so be warned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2020-11-27 04:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20942540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquaMarinara/pseuds/AquaMarinara
Summary: This is Riverdale. Twelve days north of despair and a few more south of wretched misery, it’s located right on the edge of hopelessness. My village. An ancient village. It’s been here for generations, but every single building is new. There’s fishing, hunting, and wildflower valleys for miles. The perfect village. Except for the pests. Most places have mice, or moths.Riverdale has dragons.





	1. Heimdall

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been a (very) long time coming, as I really wanted to have it completely finished before posting any chapters. 
> 
> However, while it's currently entirely planned out, only a few of the chapters are written. I'm posting the first chapter today anyway because I really just need to get it out there and let it grow naturally as I read through reviews and chat with readers.
> 
> Please leave any questions, comments, concerns, or any such thoughts down below. I would really appreciate it!
> 
> Lastly, thank you so much for reading, and I really hope you enjoy! xx

_ It often happens that things go by turns. _

** _~The Saga of Thrond of Gate, c.31_ **

~~~

_ This is Riverdale. Twelve days north of despair and a few more south of wretched misery, it’s located right on the edge of hopelessness. My village. An ancient village. It’s been here for generations, but every single building is new. There’s fishing, hunting, and wildflower valleys for miles. The perfect village. Except for the pests. Most places have mice, or moths. Riverdale has dragons. _

Wax drips, slowly, down the burning candle as he reaches to dip his quill in the ink pot. The wind howls outside, rattling the panes of glass behind the desk, and the candle light flickers before steadying itself once more.

_ Most people would leave, find somewhere new—where the mountains are taller, safer, and the crops don’t burn under dragon’s breath. Not us. We’re Vikings. _

A burst of bright white light catches his attention through the cracks in the thick curtains behind his desk, and his fingers pull at the edge of the animal hide to expose a sliver of window pane. The light subsides but catches on a few taller trees, leaves aflame. The ground stills beneath him, heavy with anticipation. His heart beats once, twice, a little faster each time. 

Jughead stands, dropping the quill onto the wooden desk in front of him.

A tin vase rattles as he pulls an arrow out of its casing, bow now slung over his shoulder. The carved tip of the weapon smacks against the heavy wooden door that shuts behind him. The scream of a village woman drowns out the sound. A stray sheep attempts to escape through the whole burned into the fence around the yard, the light gray of its fur now singed at the edges.

The light orange flicker of a pipe grows brighter as a thin man emerges from the navy shadows behind him, heavy hand impaling his spear into the ground in warning. 

“Boy,” he grumbles, acknowledging his son’s presence before setting off into the night, fearless, overconfident. For all Jughead knew, he had a right to be—Forsythe the Second, chief of their miserable tribe, had always had a swirl of rumors twisting around him. They said the young Forsythe had once popped a dragon’s head clean off its shoulders, and Jughead believed them. He had a right to be overconfident back then—back when he was sober more times than not. Now, though, Jughead’s not so sure. The alcohol fought fear tooth and nail, but it also fought his judgement, his agility. One of these days Forsythe the Second would get burned, and badly. Jughead can only hope this one won’t be the day.

Huts begin to glow as flames climb up their walls like ivy, and Forsythe, or FP as he’s always preferred, charges towards the sight, leather boots thudding against the hardened mud of the streets. Jughead follows close behind, the grooved wood of his few arrows digging into the palm of his hand. A blast of spitfire misses his left ankle by a few fot, and Jughead nearly drops them as he jumps out of the approaching dragon’s path.

His fingers shake as they reach up to tug his woolen cap lower over his head, over his ears, eyes now focused on the ground as the earth shatters around him, the chaos too much to take in.

Another sheep darts by his feet, bleating as its hooves carry it away from the village and into the refuge of the surrounding woods. A young girl sits on the steps of her small hut, legs swinging back and forth as she knits black wool together, humming lightly through the cacophony of terrible screams. Water splashes onto the ends of her dress as someone throws a full bucket at a nearby fire.

The constant hammering of metal against metal, still quite noticeable a sound despite everything, guides him to the shop, where a blacksmith bangs armor into shape.

“Yer here? I woulda thought the dragons took ye already,” he jokes without looking up from his work. His metal hand slams hard into the shield on his workbench.

Jughead rolls his eyes at the antics, skin still tingling with the sweat of terror that comes after nearly being burned alive. Frederick really believed himself to be an everyday Loki--a trickster with an interchangeable hand.

The sparks from Fred’s metal burn like the fires that travel through the woods, a whole row of rooftops on the outer edge of the village suddenly joining in the flames.

_ Old village, lots and lots of new houses, _ Jughead thinks, sadly.

A nearby cabin, wooden and topped with a roughly thatched roof, crumbles as a winged dragon crashes onto it, brought down by a poisoned arrow. Not one of Jughead’s.

He snaps his neck to look past one of the stone pillars in the open-air workshop, eyes following the trajectory that he imagines the arrow must have taken to hit the dragon’s wing at that angle. 

She stands far to his right, the slayer--bow still aimed at the sky, already re-armed. She never did wait too long for another kill. She never waited long at all. A dragon, lit in the sky by the faint wash of moonlight and crackling fires, hisses as one of her arrows clips its ear. She merely grits her teeth and digs her boots harder into the mud before releasing another. The Nightmare dragon sets itself on fire—incinerating the arrow on impact—before retreating back out over the inky black sea.

Icy blonde hair billows out behind her, green eyes brilliant against the night sky.

_ Betty. _

She almost moves in slow motion, with the gentle grace of a wolf on the prowl, and not even Cheryl dares disturb the moment, her cherry red lips sealed together, remarkless. Her own bow now tilts towards the ground as she follows the blonde girl through a grove of oak trees. A Gronckle with wings far smaller than its wart-ridden body drops from the gray-streaked sky and bares its fangs at the group of teenagers, all lined up beside Betty, but none of them budge.

Reggie charges the animal, axe swinging wildly over his head, and the fringe of his lichen-dyed armor flying out behind him. “Tiwaz!” he yells out in a battle cry, voice bellowing into the valley below as he charges the beast back towards the cliffs of the isle. 

Tiwaz: the rune for ensuring victory in battle. Nana Rose had taught him that spell as a young child and had soon done the same with the other children of the village, for it was never too early to learn how to invoke the support of Tyr, the god of victory, as a Viking. Indeed, the spell had proven itself more than useful in the past few years; it seemed the dragon attacks continued to be more frequent as time went on, and the village’s favor with Odin would soon run out.

“Tiwaz!” the others yell behind her as they easily run through the meadows of tall grass, arrows flying from bows and swords unsheathed. Their shadows shift in the moonlight with every step, ebbing and flowing through the blades of grass and wispy wildflowers, dancing to a melody only known to the night.

Jughead merely watches them all, stuck to the charcoal-blackened ground of Fred’s smithy. He’d never been one for hand-to-hand combat, and the arrows in his grip are more for show than anything else, he’ll admit. His arm stiffens as the weight of them suddenly becomes far too uncomfortable to bear, and Jughead sets his longbow down with them by Betty’s desk in the workshop.

(He tells himself it’s just a coincidence that her desk is so close. He tells himself that he isn’t just looking for an opportunity to bump into her later.)

“Heading out there without yer bow now, Jug? Yer smarter than that—tis too dangerous,” Fred warns as he continues to hammer away into the night. The smoke from his wood-burning fire billows upwards, mixing into the already thick atmosphere of the night. Jughead’s eyes begin to burn as he blinks the fog away.

“Got another plan, Fred,” he explains quickly while heading towards the wooden wall at the back of the shop. He’s nailed sheets upon sheets of parchment there, each covered in streaky plans for new gadgets. His eyes scan the wall quickly before Jughead rips his sketches for a bola launcher off of it.

He’d convinced a begrudging Betty to build him the cannon for the weapon during her spare time at the shop a few weeks ago, and tonight was the time to test the product of all his engineering.

Jughead had never liked killing the dragons. Nobody else blinked an eye at shooting one right out of the sky, but he did. It shouldn’t bother him to kill even one of these relentless creatures of death and destruction, but it does.

And that would have to change. He’s a Viking by blood, just like the others, and it’s time he acted like one—the one his father had been before the alcohol had diluted his blood, and the one the villagers needed him to be. He would be of age soon, in merely a few cycles of the tides, and then he’d finally take his place as the only successor to FP’s spot on the throne.

FP had recently made it a point to continually remind his son of his upcoming day of birth, as if the imposing throne in the entrance hall of their home wasn’t reminder enough.

(Jughead had always hated that hall--it reminded him far too much of the land of the chosen dead. The land his mother supposedly inhabited now, surrounded by the Valkyries that had taken her from him so long ago. Gods, how he hated that hall.)

He’d thought about running away, never too keen on claiming his spot on the throne, but Riverdale was an island, and Jughead had never learned to sail. FP had always been adamant against setting foot off land. Though merchants could dock their wares in the small village’s protected port, they were only to leave with the crew that they had arrived with. Thus, Jughead had never left Riverdale, and he wasn’t about to now. The dragons were from the edge of the world, and that was all he needed to know to stay put.

The only other option was to accept the position appointed to him at birth, and tonight he would finally prove himself as one of them after all, if only to finally make them proud. To make his father proud.

( _ Maybe then the drinking would stop _ , Jughead thinks, and not for the first time.)

“About time,” Jughead mutters to himself in between heavy breaths, dragging the launcher out of the workshop and along the bumpy dirt path to the top of the valley, right by the grove of old, gnarly oak trees that Betty had been concealing herself in earlier. His chest aches with every intake of air, his fingers throb as they dig into the wood of the contraption, his head pounds with anticipation.

Adrenaline surges in his veins, enough to push past all of his inhibitions, and Jughead settles himself on the grass by the machine, knees sinking into the crumbling dirt, then tilts his head up towards the darkness.

A streak of brilliant purple lights up a murky gray portion of the sky high above him, the blasts of blood red and burnt orange continuing to flare down below in the valley as the battle rages on, shrieks occasionally piercing the dense, foggy atmosphere. Jughead’s eyes shut tight as color fades to a dull gray before them, only a few spots of purple left to dance behind his eyelids as a shadow flies through the rumbling thunderclouds, spiraling downwards, and then Jughead sits up suddenly, scrambling to line up the launcher.

_ About time. _

A small convex lens magnifies the figures below him and Jughead shifts it to scan the shadow’s flight path for a predictable pattern. He steadies the bola, two heavy cannonballs connected by thick sailor’s rope, in the cannon shaft as the black tips of wings dip under the clouds once more, then lowers the angle of the launcher, inhales a breath, releases.

A tidal wave floods the sandy shores, a scream echoes against the rocky cliffs, a spirit falls out of the sky.

And then chaos erupts.

_ About time. _

~~~

“Not now, boy,” his father scolds as Jughead follows him through the wild meadow and down towards the shore, gingerly avoiding the badger laying on its side in the middle of the grass. Red runs from its leg, its neck snapped at an angle, and Jughead averts his eyes.

The adrenaline has settled low in his stomach, weighing him down.

He knows what he saw. He knows that the dark streak in the night couldn’t have survived a fall from so high above. He knows that it’s his fault.

He should feel proud. He should feel his Viking blood roaring within him.

He doesn’t.

The tips of his fingers are sore, rough where the recoil of the wood had scratched against his hands. The kill feels worse than he ever could have imagined, and for what?

“Jughead, just go,” his father sighs through Jughead’s protests.

“But dad, I swear I got him,” he nearly whispers, all the breath gone from his body. His shoulders sag, swaying with every step.

All for nothing.

“Can’t you see we’ve got bigger problems than your fantasies?” his father shouts now, exasperated, and Jughead finally turns to look past the wall of jagged cliffs facing the trembling sea.

The blood pumping through him stills, ice in his veins.

On the grainy sand of the beach lie two Vikings, one covering the other, her bow and arrows strewn across the shore. Her own shoulders shake, visible even in the oppressive darkness as she crouches over a woman with hair as blonde as hers, though a shade more ashy.

FP approaches slowly, pulling the younger girl away, and Jughead finally notices the dark purple bruises across Alice’s neck.

Alice Cooper. The warrior lying on the ground, forest green paint on her face caked with sand and seaweed, is Alice Cooper. A wave creeps across her legs. She doesn’t move.

FP wraps his arms around the younger girl—Betty, Jughead realizes with a startle—as she fights against him.

“Let me go, FP!” she chokes out through wails, voice shaky, staccato in its melody, and followed by punches directed toward the chief’s nose. FP doesn’t fight her back, just holds her harder in his arms. “You did this! You did all of this!” She stomps on his toes with her heel, and then finally strikes him between the ribs with her elbow. FP doubles over, eyes crunching shut with a wince, and Betty dashes back to her mother, hair flying.

The sky trembles with the crackle of lightning.  _ Oh, Thor _ , Jughead curses, looking up.

“Mama,” she sobs, sprawled out on her knees as her hands reach out to cradle her mother’s face. He doesn’t dare get any closer. “I promise, Mama, I promise,” he hears before he turns away from the scene.

His father doesn’t follow him, and neither do the villagers looking on in silence, eyes cast down. Jughead shakes his head, backing away from the crowd and climbing up the rocky cliff back to the grove. It isn’t any of their place to look on—not yet, at least.

The Valkyries would come tomorrow, along with the burning pyre and sorrowful looks, and Jughead hopes the villagers pay Betty the respect of privacy that his family never got.

~~~

The bright sunlight of morning sweeps over the dew-frosted lands anew, a reminder, as always, that life carries on after all, and Jughead slams his fist against the headboard of his bed.

_ Not even for Betty? The world didn’t even stop for her? _

Apparently not.

FP himself seems to be rushing through the morning’s proceedings, the chatter of countless villagers floating through the halls as they gather for the Althing. Jughead groans. He’s late.

His father typically presided over an Althing—the law-making assembly of all villagers—the morning after a raid, but Jughead had never dreaded one as much as he was dreading this one.

Dragging his legs as he sits up in bed slowly, Jughead runs a hand over his face and pinches at his cheeks to wake himself up. 

Althings were the sole aspect of being chief that he was good at. The battle strategy? Not so much. The killing? Not at all, really. Diplomacy, however, was much more his style. He always looked forward to sitting by his father’s side, listening to the plight of whichever villager had fought their way to the front of the room first, and then whispering advice into his father’s ear. He always looked forward to debating the just punishment of a lying merchant or sleazy baker, or perhaps even of a farmer who had somehow set fire to his seeds of Henbane and gone a little too loopy.

This morning, however, Jughead already knows who’ll be at the front of the line. He already knows just how many wrinkles are going to be etched into his father’s forehead, how deep the purple-blue weighing down his eyes will be. He doubts if FP has gotten any more sleep than he has.

Pulling his tunic on over his linen undershirt, Jughead reaches for the wool cap hanging from a nail in his door and shoves it over his raven locks. He slips his feet into his only pair of leather boots and opens the door to the smell of wild chickens, sweaty Vikings, and rotting fish. He can’t say it’s a pleasant odor.

“In session,” his father grumbles loudly, his chin undoubtedly resting heavily on his fist. Jughead steps in through the tiny entrance hidden behind the immense stone throne carved into their hut’s hall—the chief’s hall. His own hall, soon. Jughead silently curses Thor once more, rolling his eyes at the floral-painted ceiling far above him. 

(He couldn’t care less if the god grew to resent all his curses. Life couldn’t get much worse.)

(Except, of course, it could.)

Front of the line, as he’d expected, Betty steps forward on the worn floor, head held high and a new braid cascading down her back. She must have redone it recently, he notes.

“Morning,” she greets the room, eyes never leaving FP’s as she stares him down. “In light of last night’s events—I’m sure the gossip mill has caught you all up on them by now—I propose the re-opening of the academy,” she pauses, letting her words sink in. FP visibly clenches his jaw; Jughead shuffles on his feet. No one interrupts, and the room falls deadly silent, the large hearth in the center of them all burning brightly and without a sound. Even Odin must be listening.

“And a mission trip to find the dragons’ nest,” she finishes, eyes narrowed, clearly ready for a fight.

“We have not left this isle in decades,” FP argues immediately, straightening in his throne, the fur cloak around his neck shuffling against the old stone.

“And that is precisely why my mother was killed last night,” Betty argues back, now turning to stare down the rest of the congregation. “Is it not? If we had found the nest generations ago, would we not finally have peace in our village? Safety in our homes? Loved ones still with us?”

Cheryl and the other teens, those who have been fighting dragons since before they can remember, children grown from the chaos, cheer from the back of the hall, banging their chalices on the wooden table in support.

She has a point. She always has a point, and she knows it.

“Who’ll go?” someone shouts from behind a wooden pillar, a carved sea serpent wrapping around it.

Betty responds easily. “FP, my own father, and anyone else who has been so against our exploration of the outside world. This,” she waves her hand widely, gesturing to the burnt planks of wood about to crumble from the hall’s ceiling (Jughead makes a mental note to replace those later), “is all their fault. They better be ready to make up for it.” She taps her right foot once, twice, on the tile, a nervous habit leftover from their younger years, and Jughead peers through her fearless facade for a split second. His gaze immediately drops to the floor, fingers fidgeting with the edge of his tunic.

FP sighs heavily. “At some point, either we end them or they end us, I suppose.” His fingers grip the chair of his throne harder, and Jughead supposes he must be itching for some of Mr. Muggs’ strongest beer right about now. “And the academy? You surely have plans for that too?”

“Sign us the Frigg up!” Archie cheers from the back, raising his glass of water as if it’s brimming with the mead of the gods. Some of it spills over into his lap, but he doesn’t seem to notice, let alone mind. Cheryl has her fingers wrapped tightly around her beloved berry-red bow, and Jughead can almost make out the reassuring nod she sends Betty from his perch all the way across the room.

“Whoop some good ol’ dragon ass,” Reggie adds, now sitting on the table itself, boots perched on the bench instead. His chest puffs with self-importance before Cheryl scolds him with a back-handed swat to the shoulder.

“Fred can teach us,” Betty continues, already knowing where the blacksmith stands in their fight against the “beasts of night”. They had taken his hand from him, after all. (Jughead would know. He’d been right next to him. He doesn’t like to think about it.)

“All in favor?” Betty shouts over the increasing din of chatter in the hall. The fire has started to crackle in the hearth once again. A dog runs through people’s legs in the commotion, two small children giggling as they chase after it.

“Aye,” rings out the assembly’s approval.  _ They’d agree to violence no matter the consequences, _ Jughead comments to himself, disapprovingly. No wonder he’d never really been one of them. After shooting that dragon down last night, he’s even more sure of it.

_ The dragon, _ he suddenly remembers. His heart sinks even lower. He has to find it. There has to be a way to track the trajectory of the bola—he’ll just have to position the machine in the same spot it was last night, measure the angle with some string and the position of the stars, maybe approximate the animal’s height above him, how far out it was from the cliff—

“Jughead too,” comes his father’s voice, disintegrating all his current thoughts. “It’ll be good for you, son,” FP comments quietly, jaw setting as he turns to face him, and Jughead swallows.

If Betty’s pointed glare is anything to go by, he isn’t the only one dreading this.

~~~

“I will not hear another word about it, Jughead,” his father argues, standing by his throne after all of Riverdale’s politically active residents have finally left the hall. “I won’t have the next chief in line sitting idly around while Betty and her pirates go out there and learn to defend us all from those monsters—that’s your job, not hers. I know she means well, and I certainly owe her this after last night, but I really don’t need any more innocent kids getting hurt on my watch. You’ll join, you’ll learn, and then the academy will be disbanded once more.” A servant rushes up with a goblet full of beer on a tray, and FP immediately downs a gulp, the wrinkles around his eyes smoothing out as he does.

Jughead’s about to reply, to tell his father just how terrible this idea is once again, when FP darts into his own room, slamming the door shut in Jughead’s face.

The academy—or Hel’s own palace on Midgard, as Jughead would call it—means fighting dragons, listening to Fred’s constant criticisms, sitting at a table away from  _ her _ , alone, while she and her friends make snide remarks about him all throughout lunch. The only positive, he supposes, will be Pop’s cafeteria food.

Jughead sinks to the ground outside the door to FP’s room, head buried in his hands, and shuts his eyes.

If the world didn’t stop for Betty, why should it stop for him?

~~~

When Jughead returns to the forge later, shuffling through the high-noon shadows and avoiding any pointed stares on his way, Betty’s nowhere to be seen. He had expected as much, but releases a breath just the same.

It’s not relief, he reasons, that feeling of an anvil slowly lifting off the expanse of his shoulders. It’s never a relief to avoid Betty. He just wouldn’t know what to say to her, now. No, he would. He just wouldn’t want to.

( _ I’m sorry about your mom; I’m sorry about my dad; I’m sorry you’ll be stuck with me through dragon training for the next few weeks. _ )

In a sense, it  _ is _ relief.

That doesn’t make him feel any better.

He picks up the arrows he’d dropped onto the floor near her desk last night, shifting his quiver around his left shoulder to slip them inside, then grabs the bow in his right hand, leaving the forge through the back entrance that faces the grove.

The bola launcher sits slightly uphill, surrounded by trunks of ashen trees and fallen foliage. Footsteps in the dirt trail up to its lever, a spring-activated mechanism he’d devised months ago during one of their many other raids. Jughead turns quickly, walks backwards up the trail with a watchful eye. A glimpse of the mourning village one second, a quick glance at the ground beneath him the other. His toes prod the ground with every step backwards, always careful not to trip over an exposed tree root or unsteady pebble.

Birds chirp in the canopies above him, the last ones remaining before the cold becomes unbearable, and Jughead wishes he was one of them. A migrant, free to explore the world, free to flee. He’s sure that makes him a coward, but better that than a stubborn Viking. If the birds migrated with the seasons, why couldn’t the village? Why bear the stress of the cold, stock up on grain and salted meats in the warmer weather to save themselves from famine?

The back of his knee finally bumps into the wooden lever of the launcher, and Jughead nearly falls backwards over it before he can steady himself and turn around, crouching low to the ground as he had last night.

The cannon had tipped back on its haunches with the recoil of the shot last night, the convex lens now tilted far too high in the sky, and Jughead attempts to lower it back to the height above sea level that it had been at—a few fot above the rushing Waterfall of the Elders and some more to the right of the wildflower fields in the valley. 

Jughead tilts the convex lens down; directly underneath the estimated spot of connection between the bola and the dragon sits Serpent Cove, a hidden beach protected by a large stone barrier, smooth from years of protecting the island from an avalanche of stormy waves. The entire barrier wraps around Riverdale’s island, supposedly the reason their ancestors had picked the location to settle years ago, but becomes especially noticeable at Serpent Cove, where it hides the sandy beach from view of any incoming ships.

After hiding the bola launcher behind the rotting stump of a nearby tree, memorable enough not to forget, Jughead runs down the slope of the valley, hands running over the tops of wheat grain and bitterweeds. His quiver of arrows bounces against his back as he rushes to the cove.

As he approaches, nothing seems out of the ordinary. Vines hanging from oak branches obscure the rocky entrance to the cove, bright violet oleander sprouts from between craggy split-lines, and a lanky fawn stumbles across his path. He almost gives up on his search, disappointed and ready to recalculate the bola’s trajectory, when he manages to push past the dense curtain of vines and comes across a fallen oak tree, singed at the edges of the fault line that had caused it to tip over. The trunk, black and burnt, leads him to a path of further destruction, an uncommonly large footprint in the dirt, the streak of a wing against yet another gathering of tree trunks.

One end of the bola, the cast-iron cannonball, sits between leaves of grass, attached to the fishing rope wrapped around a dragon larger than Jughead had ever come so close to. Its scales, black and smooth, ripple at the sound of his approaching footsteps, the dragon emitting a warning growl—it’s alive, and though Jughead’s surprise doesn’t register until a moment later, he’s already reaching for a sharpened arrow tip, slipping it quickly into the bow.

At this distance, even with his unskilled aim, there’s no way he’d miss.

The animal struggles, wings fluttering against the rope wrapped tightly around it, mouth snapping open to release a burst of defeated fire. There’s an explosion of purple, then a more mellow blue as grass burns with a light flame. Its eyes shut, ears lower in wait.

Jughead lowers his bow, pulling the arrow out, and gripping the tip in his fingers. He can’t do it. Not like this. He’d felt terrible yesterday, thinking he’d killed it for certain, so how could he finish the job today? He can’t. He isn’t like the others. He doesn’t need to be, no matter how much his father pushes him to fight, to learn, to train. 

The academy will be Hel, that was always certain, but he certainly doesn’t need to add never-ending guilt to the equation of his life.

With the sharpened stone tip of the arrow in hand, Jughead crawls closer to the animal, reaching for the snared-up rope, and saws through it as much as he can, immediately backing away when the tension in the rope gives, and wings of the animal breaking open and its tail smacking against the ground in delight.

His back slams into the stone behind him, nails digging into the sand of the cove as Jughead struggles to stand up and run away.

Dragons will kill whenever they get the chance, no exceptions, and Jughead isn’t exactly trained in self-defense yet. 

The animal whirls around, now on its feet, tail knocking over a few flower stems as it sweeps over the cove’s vegetation. Blazing eyes stare Jughead down, and he stills, trapped between the stone and the animal. It approaches slowly at first, then pounces on him, front legs on either side of Jughead’s shoulders.

_ This is it, _ he thinks, eyes shut.  _ This it where it all ends. _

The dragon opens its mouth, hot breath washing over Jughead’s already sweaty features.

Death by dragon fire. It’s not like he hadn’t imagined it to be a possibility before.

_ I should’ve just killed it. Why didn’t I kill it? Why can’t I be more like them? _

He takes one last breath as the heat increases, then a roar blasts through his ears, and Jughead grips the grains of sand harder between his fingers. They slip through easily.

I’m sorry, dad.

A tear drops, and Jughead wants more than anything to wipe it away with the back of his hand, when a wet, rough tongue licks it off his cheek.

He cracks open an eye when all that’s left is a bunch of saliva that burns his nose with the smell of rotting fish.

Tongue hanging out, eyes wide and playful, the Nightfury sits on the sand before him (at least, that’s what he identifies the dragon to be upon further inspection of its inky black scales, though he’s never seen one in person before).

“You’re not going to kill me?” he rasps, incredulous. A sandy hand reaches up to wipe the saliva off his face. 

_ (A dragon always goes for the kill, boy.)  _ This one hadn’t.

The Nightfury nods, almost smiling as Jughead sits up straighter against the rock, heart still pounding.

Not all dragons are the same, he concludes. And neither are all Vikings. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all.

He smiles back.


	2. Thrúd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there.
> 
> I am foolish and probably just gave a random stranger online way more personal information than necessary, and that has left me feeling very unsettled. I just absolutely love living in the information age sometimes, don't you?
> 
> Anyway. Here's a chapter update that's been a long time coming. It is unbeta'd, unfortunately, so please let me know if you catch any mistakes, and I'll fix them up promptly (or as promptly as possible. life is hectic).
> 
> See you on the other side!

_ Back when I was young my eyes were full of life _

_ But now that I am older I live at the speed of light _

_ Feels like the cycle never… stops _

_ Feels like it’s never gonna _

** _~ “joy.”, for KING & COUNTRY_ **

~~~

~~~

The heavy wooden door—far too heavy for a seven-year-old Betty to push open herself without having to throw her entire body weight into it—had been shut to muffle the sounds of the heated argument coming from the other room. It had been shut carelessly, enough so that Betty’s toe would have been crushed in the doorway had she not moved at the last second, and Betty would have never forgiven her mother for that, she’d decided.

She’d decided a lot of things in the quiet moments she’d spent sulking in the hallway, sitting on the hard floor and against the wall, knees pulled into her chest.

She’d decided she hated that she was here, in this immense home with ceilings far higher than necessary, instead of out there in the enchanted woods that marked the end of the Coopers’ property, firing arrows into painted trees.

Alice had promised her an afternoon of archery, of Betty proving that all her practice had been truly worth it, of Betty finally impressing her mother.

Instead, the afternoon had started with bribing Polly into hiking the boot-worn trail with the two of them—her mother hadn’t wanted to leave her sister alone at home to mess with any of the potions and herbs she’d suddenly become so fascinated by—and ended with Jughead coming across them while running after his lousy old sheepdog, who must have escaped from his yard once again.

(Hotdog had more than enough space to run around in the fenced-off and diligently pruned gardens surrounding the chief’s house, and yet he always wanted more. More, more, more. No wonder he was a Jones.)

“Hey, Mrs. Cooper!” he’d greeted with all the enthusiasm of a child lost in his own world, unburdened by the issues that afflicted everyone else in the realm of reality. A child so sheltered by his birthright and blinded by his proximity to the sun that Betty couldn’t help but resent him, or run the risk of admitting her own propensity for jealousy.

His eyes had swept over the tribe of Cooper women before him, always searching (for what, she wasn’t exactly sure), fixed momentarily upon the two bows slung over her mother’s shoulders, and then on the one bow slung over hers.

(Polly would never carry her own. Her mother hadn’t even tried to negotiate that into the agreement.)

“Archery today, huh?” he’d ventured, knowing he was right. Betty merely nodded in response. Her mother had beamed a smile to the gods. Polly was already off ripping Madder plants out of the earth and collecting their roots. Betty struggled to withhold a sigh. “Mind if I join?”

“Mother,” Betty had gritted out through a clenched jaw. It ended up sounding more like “muh-dder”, and Jughead flinched at the sound. One of his hands reached up to fiddle with the frayed hem of his wool cap—the wool cap he was still wearing in the oppressing heat of the summer months. 

Alice, her head now tilted slightly to the left, seemed to be more concerned with Jughead’s awkward fidgeting than her own daughter’s distress, and Betty nearly laughed out loud through the fingers that had swiftly come up to cover her mouth. Of course she would give in. Of course the scrawny,  _ helpless  _ boy who was more than just a few months older than her own daughter would have more sway over her mother’s reasoning.

“Ask your father, Jug-head,” was her only response, and Betty already knew she’d lost. FP would never refuse his son. Nobody would.

And so, though Betty had no idea what her mother could possibly be arguing over with FP at the moment—their voices lost to the solid oak and hammered silver between them—she already knew what the outcome of the afternoon would be. She  _ had _ always been praised for her smarts.

While Polly braided Madder roots together in her lap, and Jughead nearly ripped all of the loose strands from the edges of his cap, Betty decided a few more things.

She would never stop asking for another afternoon of archery, though it would never come.

She would never stop trying to gain her mother’s approval, though she suspected that would never come either.

And, as the rapidly setting sun washed the town with burnt oranges and screaming pinks, scattering shards of color over the white-washed ceilings of the ridiculous home she’d been forced to spend her afternoon in, Betty decided she would never forgive Jughead Jones for taking the little time she had with her mother away from her. For always wanting more, and inevitably having that more come from her.

~~~

~~~

“You’re sure?” Betty asks her sister for the fourth time in as many minutes. Polly’s exasperation has finally managed to break through the aura of her zen, and a thin blue vein bulges at her forehead. She sets the wad of wool down in the bucket of water at her knees and looks up to catch Betty’s gaze.

“Of course I’m sure,” she responds in the measured tone she still hasn’t given up. If there was one thing Betty could admire in her sister it would be her temper, or rather the control she had over it. And, of course, the fact that she was always sure. 

(Betty never was.)

“You pick,” Polly explains. “You’ll know exactly what to pack her. You and mom were closer anyway.”

As much as Polly was sure, it didn’t make her right.

“But what if I forget something? What about her— her chess set?” Betty whirls around to make sure she had already deposited that particular game board and matching wooden chess pieces with the rest of her mother’s items that would be burning at the funeral that afternoon. Her mother would certainly need it with her in the afterlife.

( _ You should always be three steps ahead, Elvetle. One to ensure victory, two for safe measure. You’re bound to mess up at some point. _ )

Oh yes, that chess set would be burning today.

“Or what about her jewelry? Her rings?” She pauses, hands frozen in midair, realization dawning. “The snake ring!” Betty cries out, clambering over stray kitchenware, clothes, and Polly’s bucket, nearly slipping on the soapy water that her sister had managed to spill around it. 

“Betty, that won’t burn,” Polly reminds her quietly, yet with enough fervor that the words manage to find perch somewhere in the fiery landscape of Betty’s brain. They even manage to put out enough flames to stop Betty in her tracks, and she turns quickly in the doorway to the hall, braid whipping around to smack her cheek lightly.

“All the better to bury her with, don’t you think?”

~~~

The carved wooden wagon, a gift from Betty for Mother’s Day so many years ago, drifts lazily behind her as Betty drags it across the rocky path and out of the Western fringe of town, through the half-broken iron gate to the open expanse of unclaimed land that houses the village’s oft-used burial ground.

It was beginning to overstay its welcome on the island, tombs overlapping tombs and families having to fence around their stake in the land to ensure no other spirits would encroach. Yellow flowers, weeds, had begun to grow between the cracks in the oval patterned burial stones, but nobody had it in their heart to pluck them out of the ground just yet. It had been decided that the spirits of their ancestors would just have to accept the bright yellow weeds for as long as they continued to bring some life back to the land of the dead.

“Oi, blondie!” came Reggie’s warm greeting, smile included, as he wiped the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead. For as cool an autumn as had come in this year, the sun hadn’t quite decided to leave the North just yet. Betty reveled in its warmth, dreading the darkness to come in the next few months, but Reggie must have been cursing its existence (and her mother’s—or rather, the end of it) while digging out her grave for the last few hours.

“I’ll take that, Bettykins.” Cheryl reaches for the handle of the wagon Betty had been carting around, voice softer than she’s ever heard it. The pity in her eyes hurts more than Polly’s indifference had, and Betty’s fingers clench around the handle harder. Cheryl steps away, nodding, understanding.

Betty thanks her silently.

“I, uh, I got it,” she assures as she begins to coldly, mechanically dump all the iron skillets, silver housewares, and gold jewelry—everything that wouldn’t burn beautifully later—into the shallow pit Reggie and Archie had already begun lining with small gravestones. The snake ring, much too large for Betty’s hand, slips off her middle finger and clinks against the side of a chalice. She refuses to look at it anymore.

“You wanna carve this one out, Betty?” Archie asks her, considerate as always, as he slowly hands her the thinnest stone, the longest stone, the one that they had saved for the head of the grave. Reggie’s already started shoveling dirt back over her mother’s belongings. Betty’s heart aches at the sight.

She turns to Archie, nods once, and lightly kicks the wagon out of her way with her toe as she drops to the grass, careful not to accidentally trip into any other spirit’s property.

The leather sheath of a pocket knife slips out of the folds of Betty’s dress, the iron grip of the sharpened tool warm in her shivering hands as she takes its edge to the stone. A tear spills into her lap, entirely skimming her cheek, and Betty ignores the tightening in her chest in favor of concentrating on the workings of her fingers.

The sky clouds over, foggy and dark, and Betty sighs in relief at the sight. Odin would be coming for her mother soon enough. The sky brightens with a burst of light, and Betty carves into the stone a little harder. Thor would be too.

_ Alviss Cooper _

_ Warrior _

Her mother would be happy with that. The Valkyries would surely notice it, wouldn’t they? That would have to be enough of a sign for them, if Alice’s screaming spirit wasn’t.

Betty looks up from her handiwork, sheathing the blade and hiding it in her skirts once again, then hands the gravestone back to Archie. His hand comes down to grip her right shoulder reassuringly, and Betty places her hand over his in acknowledgement.

The boys had always been Cheryl’s friends, then hers, but that didn’t mean she loved them any less than the other girl did. It was nice having such clueless troublemakers in her life.

After pushing herself up and off the ground, brushing the dirt on the palms of her hands off against her skirts, Betty reaches for the handle of the wooden wagon once again and begins to pull it behind her.

“Thank you!” she shouts over her shoulder, over the din of the storm in the air, her back to her friends and voice as steady as she can manage. She hopes they know just how much she means it.

The wagon should be pulled all the way back home, back to pick up the load of wooden chests and wild apples to be placed on the funeral pyre tonight, but Betty leaves it behind at the edge of the island, one of the front wheels nearly tipping over the rocky cliff, a hair’s width away from careening down onto the thin strip of sandy beach that separates the island from the sea.

She isn’t quite sure why she’s here, back in the spot where one of the sea creatures had emerged to steal away her mother’s life, but she knows that it feels right. For the first time in the past few hours, for the first time in a while, something feels right. And that’s reason enough.

Her fingers slip between the cracks in the pebbles, small grains of sand lodging themselves in the grooves of her nails. She finds she doesn’t mind it as much as she used to.

The surface of the sand burns her bare skin, especially the soles of her feet that she’d revealed by kicking off her worn boots. Blisters must be forming underneath her toes, but again, Betty doesn’t mind.

With the sun beating down on her face, eyes squinting as they stare out over the expanse of water and the edge of the world, Betty lets out a breath that had been bubbling in her chest for far too long. Her mother’s gone now, and Betty’s not sure how she feels about that.

Alice Cooper had always been the ideal, the unattainable. The woman that Betty aspired to be, the fearless warrior whose only failure had been setting so much distance between herself and her daughters. Though, Betty supposes, she couldn’t blame her for that. They were all human, after all, and even Alice Cooper had to have a flaw in her armor. It was unfortunate, though—and entirely selfish of Betty—to have wished that her flaw would have been any other one.

Does she mind that her mother’s gone? Betty’s still not sure.

(She’s never sure.)

Does that make her a terrible person?  _ That _ , she’s sure of.

Betty lets out another breath, eyes now shut to avoid the punitive glare of the sun.

“It’s not your fault, Betty,” interrupts the unwaveringly high-pitched voice that Betty’s come to associate with the color red, and her cousin. Her eyes snap open immediately, neck twisting in the direction of the force of nature that is Cheryl Blossom.

She hadn’t been thinking it was her fault, exactly, but should she have been?

_ You’re a terrible person, Elvetle. _

“I’m sorry,” her cousin adds quietly, now sitting in the sand next to her. Betty knows just how much Cheryl hates the sand, the beach, the water attacking them quickly before pulling itself back as if it’s been burned. She’s so grateful that despite all that, Cheryl’s at her side. Cheryl loves her enough to be here.

_ You don’t deserve her, Elvetle. _

“Sorry for what, Cheryl?” Betty laughs wryly, her mouth puckered as if she’s sucked on one of those expensive sour lemons brought to the island from the Rhineland. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I couldn’t help her— save her.” Betty’s voice cracks at the end of the sentence, mind clouding like the sky above them. Maybe she does blame herself. Maybe she isn’t as heartless as she’d thought.

She’s still not sure how she feels about that, and this time, her mother’s voice isn’t loud enough in her mind to provide her with an answer.

“I’m sorry you had to see her like that; I’m sorry you feel the way you do. I know you, Betty. I know the pain, the loss. It all stings, even when you don’t expect it to.”

Cheryl hadn’t had to see her mother  _ like that _ , Betty reminds herself, but she’d still lost her just as Betty had. Penelope Blossom had been no more of a mother than Alice Cooper, if Betty recalls the fuzzy memories of her childhood correctly, but losing her had changed Cheryl more than anyone had expected it would.

The loud, snarky little girl with fiery red hair and even more mischievous eyes had become sullen, and far less chaotic than she had before. Betty remembers her own mother claiming that Cheryl had changed for the better; Betty remembers missing her cousin more than she’d ever missed her aunt.

Cheryl had only become herself again, with the addition of stained berry-red lips, after finding a home in the folds of Nana Rose’s dress, the only woman on the island with hair as vibrant as hers and a talent for storytelling that kept the children entertained far more than Cheryl’s antics ever had.

“I’m sorry too,” Betty murmurs softly into the linen of her cousin’s garment-covered shoulder.

Their hands find each other in the warmth of the sand, and Betty lets herself shut her eyes once more, the fires in her mind withering out to leave a few dull embers behind. She can finally think, the quiet settling over her like a comforting quilt, and not even her mother’s voice manages to tear its fabric apart.

~~~

Upon Polly’s request, Betty would be the one to ignite the pyre, her father standing stoically behind her.

There would be no tears on his end, of course, and so there would be none on Betty’s either. Her mother’s spirit would likely revolt at the first sight of any emotion whatsoever, and just for that, Betty nearly wants to break down in front of the entire village—to spite her mother and her efforts at perfection that had suffocated Betty her entire life—but she still hasn’t given up on her quest for her mother’s approval, and so Betty’s cheeks remain dry, eyes lifeless.

The arrow in front of her face burns brightly enough to obscure her view, but it would be hard to miss. Betty’s target-practice wouldn’t be on display tonight; the entire pile before her (comprised of the carved wooden wagon from earlier today, some charcoal of Ash tree, and the wooden casket containing her mother’s body) takes up more space than the entire village of onlookers. The more burning objects, the more smoke transporting her mother all the way up into the sky and into the afterlife.

A part of Alice would always stay in the mortal realm, Betty knows, but it’s also a comfort to know that her mother will finally be in the place she’d always dreamed of, in a world that had taken up more of her thoughts than this one. She would finally be happy, and though Betty still doesn’t quite understand how she feels about her mother’s time on Midgard having been cut far too short, her happiness quite makes up for it all.

At least, her expected happiness. She  _ should _ be going to Valhalla—had always wanted to go to Valhalla—but the afterlife was never certain.

Betty feels the tension of her bow snap as her fingers finally release the arrow, sending the oiled up pyre into flames, and her hand comes to rest above her eyes to shield them from the burst of light.

Thunder rolls above them, the air damp and suffocating as it absorbs the smoke from the fire, and Betty can’t help but hope that the Valkyries truly have come for her mother already. They must have. The smoke is lower in the sky than usual, the air smelling less of burnt and more of soggy moss, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Odin’s rejection. Not at all.

It can’t. Or else, what was the point of this all? Of  _ it _ all?

She’s not sure. Someone else may be.

~~~

The leaves of Nana Rose’s ash tree appear to have fallen off already, without even having turned their autumnal mustard seed yellow, all of them blending in with the dark green grass lining the rest of Nana’s yard.

Betty hadn’t expected the year to be moving by so quickly already, but perhaps Urd’s well had run a tad bit dry this year, and the ash tree was having a hard time gathering enough nutrients to keep its leaves. One of the tree seeds, known for their ability to glide over the winds, flutters its wings as it lodges itself in the nook of Betty’s braid.

Upon further inspection of the tree, Betty notes that it must have been one of the last seeds left behind, and she worries her lower lip underneath her teeth.

“Don’t fret, dearie,” Nana advises sweetly, following Betty’s gaze to the barren branches. “That rotting pest’s just attempting to pull an old prank on me, you see. A trickster, that one, but I see right through him!” She yells in the tree’s direction, crooked finger now pointed accusingly at its trunk. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Aesc,” she reminds the tree as her left hand comes to rest on Betty’s shoulder, guiding her inside the tiny cottage that Nana had claimed immediately upon her arrival in the small village.

The older woman had appeared out of the Red Woods years ago, back when Polly hadn’t even attempted to touch any of the herbs growing in their garden, let alone mix potions with them. Her flaming red hair had ignited a swirl of gossip immediately, everyone whispering about the wandering Norna—the magical fortuneteller who would certainly only spin them lies.

Norna, or Nana as the children would affectionately come to call her, had set up camp on the outskirts of town, pulling together a one-bedroom oak cottage in what seemed to be an inexplicably short amount of time.  _ Magic _ , Cheryl had explained, back when the village children had even thought to question any of Nana’s mysteries, and they’d all taken her statement as fact.

Years after that, Betty could still hear Cheryl’s voice in her head whenever she thought of the kind old woman who sat under her withering Ash tree every day of the year, chanting runes and reciting the same ancient tales to new generations of Viking children, no matter the weather.

_ Magic. _

“Some ale, dear?” Nana calls from her rocking chair by the cauldron, pulling Betty out of her own head. She’s still only halfway through the door, hand gripping the frame hard enough for her nails to make a new mark on the worn home.

She’d been so distracted that she hadn’t even noticed the other person in the room, one with a wool cap pulled so low over his raven locks that Betty’s surprised he can even hear a thing being said.

Nana’s wooden cup is nearly full to the brim with ale, which she proceeds to swallow down in one go.

“Jughead here refused my offer,” Nana continues, and Betty notices him shift slightly in his seat, “so I’ve far too much left behind, and all for myself? Goodness, no.” She lets out a small chuckle, followed by another gulp of ale from yet another cup. She seems to be soothed immensely by the feeling of the drink washing over her dry lips—a lingering side effect, Betty imagines, of all the leaves of henbane she’s smoked in the late hours of the night over the years.

(Cheryl claimed it calmed Nana’s nerves, but Betty was pretty sure most of the Norna’s closely-guarded “visions of the future” came from the practice.)

“No, Nana, thank you though,” Betty finally responds, shuffling across the cluttered living room to sit on the other side of the low bench that Jughead’s perched himself on. She isn’t sure that drinking will be able to solve all her problems tonight, and she’d rather not create new ones for herself at a time like this. “I came to see you at Cheryl’s suggestion, actually—”

“You saw her tonight?” Jughead’s eyes widen for a second before returning to their normal size, the ocean blue nearly hazel against the firelight.

Betty stutters, confused by his outburst, and turns to face him fully with her response. “Yeah—uh—yes, I saw her before the funeral, and there, of course, but I didn’t really get to talk to her much.” The last half of her sentence is quiet, garbled in her mouth, but Jughead seems to understand her just the same. He nods quickly, gaze now averted into his lap once again. Betty can feel her lips slant at the edges, eyebrows pulling together on her forehead.

_ What does he know about Cheryl? Need from Cheryl? Has something happened to her? _

“She was right to send you here, darling,” Nana adds in gently, and if she isn’t worried about her own granddaughter then Betty probably shouldn’t be either, but the younger girl’s heart still insists on beating far too quickly for her liking. “I’m sure you’re dealing with your mother’s death just fine.”

Betty moves to protest against that point when Nana holds up a bony hand to silence her. She takes another gulp of her ale, and the fire crackles underneath the immense iron cauldron hanging from the beam above their heads.

“However, it always helps to talk to others, to work through your emotions, or even to put them aside for a moment and distract yourself from reality.” Nana seems to lose herself for a moment, eyes glazing over as she peers out over the cramped room. “The world is dark enough on a good day,” she slips in as an afterthought, fingers dragging her cup back up to her cracked lips.

“Distract me, Nana,” Betty almost pleads, fingers rolling bits of fabric between them. “Those stories from when we were little, maybe?” Sigurd was the hero’s name, wasn’t it? The one who slayed that terrible dragon. She’d like to hear that one again tonight.

“No, no, no stories.” She directs a pointed look at Betty. “Especially not those of Sigurd and Brynhildr.”

How on Midgard had she known?

“But, perhaps, a prophecy.” Her eyes sparkle in the twinkling lights and flickering shadows of the room, and Jughead looks up immediately at the knowing tone of her voice. “One from the ancient runes itself, one that good old Aesc decided to gift me the knowledge of right before he went and rotted himself silly. Now, let’s see.” She reaches for the monocle resting on the table in the center of the room and slips the glass before her one working eye.

(The other had been replaced with glass years before she had ever showed up on the island, and the children had never managed to pull an explanation for it out of her.)

Her eyes shut, rendering the monocle entirely useless, as she begins to recite, “Aesc is very tall, dear to men, Strong in foundation— ah rats, no. That’s another one. He’s so very arrogant, you see?”

Betty nods, and though Nana still has her eyes shut to the world, she seems to register Betty’s acknowledgement just the same. A wiry smile creeps along her lips.

She clears her throat once, twice. “Now, where were we. Right: Awaken, my child, for Tyr stirs above, Thorn of time in his side and certainly no love. Awaken at last, my raven Fury of the North, For only with ice will the end of all burst forth.” The fire seems to dim with her last word, lightning replacing its light as it streaks across the thin glass window. Thunder rolls in the distance, the walls shaking with the crash.

Jughead’s hand reaches up for his wool cap, pulling it off his head with a swift tug and replacing it with the fingers of his other hand as they card through his hair. He looks good, Betty has to admit, though the tension of the room must have pinched his features together. He looks good, but anxious. Decidedly anxious.

“This— this prophecy,” he finally asks after a few more jerky movements, “it was not truly meant for us, was it?”

“Of course it was, dearie!” Nana responds, pure glee brightening her features as she lets out another chuckle, then a hiccup. “Aesc wouldn’t let me read it otherwise. And how delightfully hilarious it is, no?”

“Right. Hilarious,” Jughead mutters, and Betty has to agree.

Hilarious?  _ The end of all _ certainly doesn’t sound hilarious to her, especially if it’s a message meant for them. She hadn’t exactly caught that part earlier. 

“I should really go then, Nana,” Jughead excuses himself, hat now back on his head, as he reaches down to give the elderly woman a hug. “Thank you for having me tonight.” His fingers twitch as he reaches for the doorknob, and Betty releases a sigh. She’ll have to be the one to go after him, won’t she?

“Truly, thank you, Nana,” Betty adds as she stands up from the bench as well. The old Norna had most certainly done her job of distracting Betty from her thoughts; she had also, of course, provided an entirely new set of thoughts for Betty to spiral through tonight, but that was no matter. She had more time-sensitive matters at hand anyway.

“You’re so very welcome, my child!” Nana’s voice rings through the foggy night as Betty tries not to let the door slam shut behind her. The hoot of an owl in the woods follows her past Nana’s Ash tree, through the garden path, and down the dirt road to the chief’s house. 

“Gods, what a miserable house,” Betty grumbles as she pushes past the wooden gate to the front yard, picking her way through clothes lines as she rounds the side of the house, finally coming to a stop underneath the window that she’s fairly certain is Jughead’s. She  _ hopes _ .

~~~

Betty sighs in relief when Jughead nearly slams the right window pane in her face. At least it’s his room, and not FP’s—or worse, a gossip-loving servant’s.

“What on Midgard are you doing here?” he whispers harshly, careful not to yell at this hour of the night.

Betty rolls her eyes, hand gripping the bottom of the window frame in order to lift herself through the opening. “Are you going to let me in or not, Jones?” she responds with as much anger in her tone, and he finally steps back to give her the space to maneuver her way inside. As soon as she does, his arms are crossed over his chest. She can’t help but roll her eyes once again.

“No, seriously, what are you doing here?”

She crosses her own arms over her chest, then quickly drops them to her side when she notices his gaze drift to the low-cut neckline of her dress. She refuses to roll her eyes for the third time in as many minutes, but really… men. Who ever put them in charge of humanity?

“Considering the hissy fit you nearly threw at Nana’s just a few moments ago, I thought I’d stop by and make sure you were oka—you know—” She frantically waves her hands in the air now. “—not about to burn the entire village to the ground.”

“I’m not that dramatic, Betty.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Then beg,” he retorts, a smirk finally transforming his features to an emotion on the positive side of the spectrum, and Betty almost decides to let him have the win. Almost.

“In your wet dreams, Jones.”

His face suddenly returns to a scowl, and Betty can’t help but giggle.

“Jughead?” FP’s drowsy voice filters in through the door, and Betty nearly hits herself in the face as her hand flies up to cover her mouth. Jughead freezes, shoulders tensing. “Is someone with you?”

“Ah, no, dad,” he calls out, and Betty would laugh at his failed attempt at nonchalance if only the sound wouldn’t give her away immediately. “Just talking to Betty through the window. She’s a little nervous about starting up at the academy so soon, you know? Jitters.” He shoots her a shit-eating grin, and this time she does huff out a breath of indignation. Jitters? Her? Please.

“Alright,” comes a skeptical response from the hallway, and then the sound of FP’s footsteps as he pads down the hall to his own bedroom.

“Oh, it is on, Jones,” Betty whispers haughtily as soon as the footsteps fade to nothingness, still cautious of getting caught.

“Hasn’t it always been on, Cooper?”

He has a point.

“Alright, well, even I can tell that you’re probably not about to go and burn the entire village down in a blind rage, so I’d say my job here is done, wouldn’t you?” She poses it as a question because, if she’s being honest with herself, she doesn’t exactly want to leave just yet.

Home right now is Polly mashing up clubmoss and walnuts for potions, her father packing for his and FP’s expedition to find the dragons’ nest, and an overall indifference to her mother’s disappearance from the mortal plane of existence forever. There definitely isn’t anyone to discuss Nana Rose’s prophecy with, or someone so irritating that any word from his mouth will probably distract her enough from her thoughts in order to fall asleep.

“Or,” he ventures, most certainly picking up on her agitated movements and rushed speech, “you could stay. Take the bed, if you like—I’ve no use for it anyway. The bed, the room, it’s all too big. I’ll just take the floor.”

“The floor?” Betty nearly shouts before remembering herself, and the time of night, and muffling her voice with her hand once again. For as much as she really, inexplicably, wants to stay—a feeling which she’s sure is just a trick of the hour and will be gone come morning—she isn’t about to relegate him to the floor. Or rather, her mother’s ingrained politeness isn’t about to relegate him to the floor.

“Yeah, see,” he clarifies, opening the door to a walk-in closet triple the size of Betty’s own hole-in-the-wall, its floors lined with fur coats that most likely used to hang from the wooden hooks in the walls. “This is much more my speed.”

“I’m not going to let you sleep on the floor on your own, Jughead.” She’ll take the floor if she has to—if it means she can stay just a little longer. 

_ Awaken, my child, _ comes Nana’s voice, and Betty really just needs to stay. She needs to sleep, and most certainly not wake up, for a few hours more.

“Fine,” he acquiesces, and she lets out a sigh of relief. “Then you’ll just have to join me.”

_ Oh gods. _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been debating, for a while now, whether to post this chapter or delete the fic entirely.
> 
> As it was nominated for a bughead fanfiction award by a lovely soul, I've decided to post this and keep the fic up. I truly hope you enjoyed the update. Thank you all for your constant support.
> 
> Much love xx


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